3 Tips for Pitching HARO

I recently put a media query in HARO’s newsletter asking for women entrepreneurs who have received major press to send me a short email so I could interview them for readers here at Create Hype.

Instead of waiting for the responses to pour in one by one, I decided to let the messages pile up so I could do a thorough comparison of each pitch email for and decipher why some work and some, just don’t.

Here’s what I discovered works – and what doesn’t – by the 46 pitches I received:

– Don’t be vague

Out of 46 pitches, a whopping 15 of them didn’t mention what specific media outlets their business had mentioned in. Since 31 other respondents made it clear, I’m only going to respond to that group since it’s less work. By being clear about why you fit a journalists story, they’re much more likely to include you in their shortlist.

– Don’t pitch unrelated ideas

I was shocked to see many emails from people pitching me on why their company or products would be a good fit for my website. While it’s easy to see lots of joint venture opportunities for your home business among HARO’s queries, filling up someones inbox with an unrelated pitch will get you pegged as someone with little value to offer and it could hurt your future chances of being mentioned by the same outlet in the case their next query fits your business perfectly.

– Break up your text

I was surprisingly pleased to see that the majority of my pitchers broke up their email text and even used bullet points, italics, bolding and various other visually pleasing methods to help their pitch sing to me. If you’d like to have more of your queries responded to, perfect a little pitch template that is very attractive to the eye to give your chances a boost.

What are you best tips for getting HARO queries responded to? Let us know in the comments!